


A Christmas Campaign

by Transposable_Element



Category: Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Conspiracy, F/M, First Kiss, Friendship, Jealousy, Kissing, Mistletoe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 20:00:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2824373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Transposable_Element/pseuds/Transposable_Element
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tom Dudgeon finally meets (most of) the Swallows and Amazons. They're not what he expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Christmas Campaign

Tom had heard so much from Dick and Dorothea about the Swallows and Amazons that they were bound to be disappointing when he finally met them. Now the Walkers and the two Blackett girls were visiting the Callums over Christmas, and Dot suggested Tom take the train down for the day. Meeting them _en masse_ was a bit daunting, but he wanted to see Dot and Dick, so he caught an early train.

And the much-vaunted Swallows and Amazons _were_ disappointing. Tom could understand that Nancy Blackett was feeling her responsibility as the eldest, because early in the afternoon Professor and Mrs. Callum had gone out with Mrs. Walker and Bridget, leaving Nancy and Susan in charge of the house. So Nancy probably wasn’t her normal self—but Peggy wasn’t acting like an Amazon pirate either, and Susan wasn’t sensible, and Titty was…well, he wasn’t sure what he’d expected from Titty, but nothing as silly as this. John, who might have provided him with some protection from the girls, wasn't due home on leave for a few more days. Dick was out in the back garden with Roger, working on some contraption or other. And Dot was quietly drifting around the edges of the room like a ghost.

The real problem was the mistletoe. Susan, Peggy, and Titty all kept trying to catch him under it, and as it was three to one, someone was bound to get him eventually. That mightn’t be so bad except that the one girl he really wanted to kiss wasn’t going anywhere near the mistletoe and wasn’t speaking to him or even looking at him. He glanced surreptitiously at his watch. The next train back to Norfolk wasn’t due for another hour and a half.

 

Dot couldn’t believe the way her friends were acting. Especially Titty, to whom Dot had confided a great deal about her feelings for Tom. What had gotten into them? They didn’t usually act like this. Now she was wishing that she hadn’t talked about Tom so much, because apparently she had made all of her friends fall in love with him from afar. Or maybe they had all inexplicably turned silly about boys overnight. At least Nancy wasn’t joining in.

Now Peggy and Susan were both talking to Tom, and she could see that they were stepping closer to him, forcing him to back away, with every step bringing him closer to the mistletoe. It looked like a planned attack. How could they? She decided to go to the kitchen where she wouldn’t have to watch.

 

Tom managed to slip away before he could be cornered and said he was going outside to see what Dick and Roger were doing. He was grateful that none of the girls followed him. But he couldn’t make head nor tail of what the two younger boys were up to, except that it seemed to involve a lot of pulleys. And it was cold. “Going in now, I think,” he said after a few minutes, and Dick absently replied that they were almost finished and would be in soon. With Dick that could mean five minutes or two hours, but Roger was beginning to grumble about being hungry, so perhaps they would be inside sooner rather than later. Still, Tom was bored and cold and aggravated, so he decided not to wait, even though he knew the boys might provide a useful buffer. This turned out to be a mistake, as shortly after he went back inside he discovered that Peggy had moved the mistletoe to a new location. Finally caught, he grudgingly kissed her on the cheek. He looked around the room, searching for a means of escape.

“Where’s Dot gone?” he asked.

“I think she’s in the kitchen,” said Peggy, looking at him sidelong and batting her eyes. She looked as though she hadn’t had much practice at that sort of thing. 

Tom decided he had had enough—again—and excused himself. He went into hall and found his way to the kitchen. He closed the kitchen door behind him and collapsed against it. Dot, who was sitting at the table, looked up.

“Is there any mistletoe in here?” he asked.

“No.”

“Good!” he said, without thinking, and regretted it as soon as he saw the stricken look on Dot’s face. He’d hurt her feelings, and there was only one way to put it right, which was to come out and say what he’d been trying to say every time he’d seen her during the last year. “I mean…we don’t need mistletoe, do we, Dot?” he said.

She was looking fixedly at the table. She hesitated for a moment. Then she sighed. “No, of course we don’t,” she said, looking up with a brave little lift of her chin.

Apparently he’d mucked it up again. He sat down at the table next to her. “I mean to say,” Tom said carefully, “Sometimes there’s mistletoe, and then you have to kiss, even if you don’t want to.” He took a deep breath. “…and sometimes you _want_ to kiss, and then you don’t need any mistletoe. We don’t need mistletoe, do we, Dot?”

At first he thought she had misunderstood him again. But after a moment she smiled. “No. We don’t need any mistletoe,” she said.

 

A few minutes later Roger opened the kitchen door, but he closed it again immediately. He went back into the living room: “That Tom is kissing our Dot in the kitchen,” he reported. “Is there any chocolate left?”

Everybody looked up. Nancy glanced at Dick, but he seemed neither surprised nor disapproving. She wondered if that was just Dick being Dick, or if he already knew something about his sister and Tom. Then she sighed. “I’m in command. I suppose I’d better go in there and break it up,” she said, not sounding very eager about it.

“Oh, give them a few more minutes,” said Susan sweetly. Then, uncharacteristically, she giggled. That was when Nancy noticed that Susan, Titty, and Peggy were all wearing rather smug expressions. Nancy looked at them bemusedly, and then she groaned and said, “What have you galoots been doing?”

“Well, Dot’s been going on about Tom for years, you know that!” said Peggy. “But nothing was happening, so we thought we’d give them both a push.”

“So that’s why you were all acting like ninnies. Stirring up jealousy. Shiver my timbers, that’s a very dangerous game!” said Nancy, shaking her head.

“Well, it seems to have worked,” said Peggy defensively. “I _knew_ that mistletoe would come in handy for something.” 

“Nobody ever tries to catch _me_ under the mistletoe,” said Dick thoughtfully. Peggy and Titty looked at each other behind his back. Peggy grinned and nodded, and then each of them took hold of one of his arms and they dragged him under the mistletoe. He dutifully kissed each of them in turn. After they all sat down again he reviewed his findings as he polished his glasses carefully. A sample size of two was not a very good basis for comparison, but it was a start. Kissing Peggy was almost exactly like kissing his sister, he decided, except that she was an inch or two taller than Dot. Kissing Titty was quite a bit more interesting. He noticed that Titty was blushing a little, but he wasn’t sure how to interpret that. He decided to ask Dot what it meant later.

 

When Tom and Dorothea came back into the living room a few minutes later, the atmosphere had changed. Someone had built up the fire in the grate, and the Swallows and Amazons were sitting in front of it eating chocolate and talking about (what else?) sailing. For some reason, the girls seemed to have given up on the mistletoe campaign, for which Tom was duly grateful. He liked them all much better than he had half an hour earlier, which was a good thing, as he was now in no particular hurry to get back to Norfolk.

Titty caught Dorothea's eye and winked, and Dot, realizing that she'd failed to recognize a plot device she should have been able to spot miles away, winked back at her friend.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been sitting on this idea for a while and finally decided to write it, seeing as it's seasonal. 
> 
> I'm imagining this taking place in December, 1936, at which point the characters would range in age from about 13 (Roger) to 20 (Nancy), depending on which timeline you use. :-)


End file.
